freediver wrote on May 17
th, 2010 at 7:59pm:
[quote]PJ, you made an appeal to his authority. I would be happy to withdraw my request that you back up this claim if you withdraw the claim. You started this goose chase. Only you can end it. Your goose is cooked, so don't be a goose, there is no golden egg, errr triangle....
You might find this interesting. Hopfully it will put an end to this moronic line of argument of yours:
Re:
From: Walter Starck
Clarification of more Moore misstatements
Date: 2 November 2009
Recently I had begun to consider if I had perhaps been too harsh on Minister Moore and what I had thought to be poor judgement might be more a matter of poor advice. I must now thank Mr. Moore for relieving any such doubt and generously providing another opportunity to address some of his misstatements.
Who is a “Scientist” and Does it Matter?
At the WAFIC AGM of 23 October the Minister made some remarks implying doubt regarding my qualifications as a “scientist” (with the quotation marks his addition). This deserves some comment as it seems the Minister may not understand that matters of science are determined by reason and evidence, not by consensus or pissing contests over credentials. In fact, some of the most important advances in science have come when relative unknowns challenged prevailing expert opinion with an explanation which proved to be a better one. In scientific disagreements, attacks on personal qualifications are an implicit admission of defeat. They are invariably only resorted to when there are no credible answers to a better argument.
Although largely irrelevant, as the Minister apparently thinks my qualifications important enough to concern himself with, I will fill in a bit on my background. If nothing else, this might provide some small reduction in the ignorance under which he is so obviously labouring in this respect.
I grew up on an island in the Florida Keys in a family of fishermen and began catching and selling fish off the family dock at age 5. At age 6 I got my first boat and a castnet. During high school I dived for crayfish to earn pocket money and would regularly catch between 50 to 200 pounds in a day’s diving. I attended university at the University of Miami and on completing my BSc scored in the top one percentile in the national Graduate Record Examination. I went on to graduate school at the Institute of Marine Science under a National Science Foundation Fellowship, one of the highest academic scholarships in the U.S. The IMS (now Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences) was and is among the top marine science research institutions in the world. I completed my PhD studies in record time and was awarded the degree in early 1964.
Since then I have worked independently. This has included research grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, National Geographic Society and various private foundations. For twenty years I owned and operated my own 104 ton research vessel exploring widely from the Caribbean to the S.W. Pacific including 10 years on the Great Barrier Reef and in the Coral Sea. I have often worked in cooperation with various research organizations. In such capacity I have been a Research Associate of the Institute of Marine Science, The Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu, The Australian Museum in Sydney and the Western Australia Museum.
My research experience has included studies in over two dozen countries and resulted in numerous articles, books,
scientific reports in peer reviewed journals and documentary films which have been(broadcast in over 50 countries. It has also resulted in the discovery of over 100 species of fishes that were new to science, numerous new invertebrates and over 100,000 specimens now in the reference collections of major museums. One, a rare slit shell, became a gift of state from the U.S. Government to the Emperor of Japan on the occasion of his visit to the U.S.
In addition to basic research, I have worked extensively in development of marine technology and hold two patents in this area. This design and development experience includes several boats, an amphibious aircraft, various underwater photographic and lighting equipment and the